Re: Maneuvering a Spaceship

On 12 Aug., 06:39, IsaacKuo <mech...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think he must
have meant thousands of km/s, which is reasonable for
a magical fusion torch drive.

Exactly right, thanks for pointing out this typo.

The original question explicitly involved handwaving the
existence of some sort of "torch" drive technology.

Torch drive yes, but driven not so much by Handwavium, rather
Unobtainium. The esteemed Luke Campbell has pointed me towards various
concepts concerning magnetic monopoles or Q-Balls that might be use to
decay intermediate nuclei into smaller nuclei and lots of energy. The
idea is to take for example Oxygen, convert two of its protons, and
use the energy to accelerate the remaining fragments, which could be
two 7Li-nuclei in this case. Then transfer some of the Li's kinetic
energy to addtional propellant to achieve open-cycle cooling.
Anyway, for purposes of this thread, it can as well be called a
"magical torch drive" with n-thousand km/s delta-V, as long as we keep
in mind you can't scale it down deliberately.

Note that electric thrusters have a much larger potential
market than any sort of nuclear thermal rocket.

What are the theoretical / physical limits on electric thrusters'
exhaust velocity, thrust and mass?
.

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